Monday, June 27, 2011

Senator Levin Loves Himself a Government Motors Volt

The Detroit Free Press: Sen. Carl Levin loves his new Chevrolet Volt -- and what it means

But its electric power was the reason he bought it.

"It's much cheaper to run it on electricity. And cleaner, of course. So I bought it to get those savings downstream," he said.
Cleaner out the tailpipe perhaps, but not if you take into account the coal needed to provide for the electricity to charge it. Also accoridng to the article he seems to run it on gas a lot, nullifying the whole "cleaner" claim. Nor is the Volt cheaper if you run an total cost of owenrship analysis - wish it was, but it isn't yet.

The article does show that, at least on this occasion, even Senators can be hampered by Washington bureaucracy and regulations, namely the difficulties in getting a charging station for the Volt installed at the Capitol building. Of course unlike us, he can push legislation through to make this annoyance go away.

The sad thing is, he's pretty representative of the congressman that passed the bailout of GM among other things and are helping run this economy into the ground:
At one point, the glowing digital letters on the dashboard made him wrinkle his forehead.

"This A and B, I'll be damned if I know what that means," he said. (A and B are trip odometers for separate journeys.)
Democrats in this modern day can't even figure out what a trip odometer is, much less the fine art of good governance.

3 comments:

Scott said...

It will only be cheaper to run on electricity until his buddy "O" gets "Cap and Tax" passed. Then that electricity that is so cheap when it's produced by coal won't be nearly as cheap when it has to be produced by wind or solar or biomass or whatever. TCO gets way bigger then, Senator.

Spikessib said...

I'm beginning to think that all of our elected representatives have some sort of intrinsic disconnect from reality. Must be what allows them to decide to run in the first place. Or they're the vanguard of the zombicalypse.

Boat Guy said...

Given the subsidies GM got the price-per unit of the Volt is something like $80K per. I'll wager Sen Levin didn't pay that.